Carters, Cashes are focus of Braintree filmmaker's music documentary

Wednesday

Jul 23, 2014 at 5:28 PMJul 24, 2014 at 5:48 PM

Braintree native Beth Harrington's newest documentary, “The Winding Stream: The Carters, the Cashes and the Course of Country Music,” has its local premier as the opening night film at the 23rd annual Woods Hole Film Festival Saturday.

By Ed SymkusFor The Patriot Ledger

What’s a person who loves filmmaking and making music to do? In the case of Braintree native Beth Harrington, the answer was simple: Combine them. Harrington’s newest documentary, “The Winding Stream: The Carters, the Cashes and the Course of Country Music,” which has its local premier as the opening night film at the 23rd annual Woods Hole Film Festival Saturday, is all about music. It focuses on the story of the traditional bluegrass/country/old timey group the Carter Family. Her previous film, “Welcome to the Club: The Women of Rockabilly,” though made back in 2001, has a direct connection to the new one.

Speaking by phone from Portland, Oregon, where she’s ensconced in a Public TV series about photography, Harrington recalled when the idea for “The Winding Stream” was hatched.

“I was working on ‘Welcome to the Club’,” she said. “I’d written some narration, and I wanted the voice of a woman, maybe someone who was in the music world, someone with an understanding of the generational aspects of this music, music that people were playing it in the ‘50s, and are still playing. I thought Rosanne Cash would be good, and she agreed to do it.” Cash, a country-pop star in her own right, is the daughter of music legend Johnny Cash and his first wife, Vivian Liberto. When Harrington began thinking about doing another music documentary, she recalled that many of the women she interviewed in the rockabilly film talked about the Carters.

“I thought something was there,” she said. “I was waiting for the right time for Rosanne to introduce me to John and June.” She got a laidback Johnny Cash to reminisce about the Carter Family – Cash’s second wife was June, one of the popular Carter Sisters, and the daughter of musical matriarch Mother Maybelle Carter. But June had died before Harrington could begin filming. Ironically, Johnny Cash died about three weeks after he did the interviews.

The film uses plenty of performance footage, along with photos and audio tapes of Carter Family members, as well as appreciative and informational comments from contemporary musician fans. The story stretches back to the days when founding member A.P. Carter used to travel around the country collecting old songs, many of which had been handed down through families for many generations, right up to the present, with a look at the Carter Family concerts that still happen every Saturday night in Poor Valley, Virginia.

After “The Winding Stream” got good buzz at this year’s South by Southwest Festival, organizers of the Woods Hole Festival reached out to Harrington and offered her an opening night spot.

But Harrington’s interest in music goes a lot deeper than just making films about it. She clearly remembers buying her first Beatles albums at Kresge’s in the South Shore Plaza, then becoming a regular record buyer at Krey’s Disc Shop, also at the Plaza. Back in her high school days, she spent time volunteering on the phone lines at WBCN where, knowing nothing of what was in store for her, she became a fan a Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers, who got regular airplay there courtesy of deejay Maxanne Sartori.

During her four years at Syracuse University, Harrington had a show on the college radio station, fully intending to have a career in radio. But with no jobs on the horizon after graduation, and a growing interest in storytelling, she gravitated toward documentary work, landing gigs at a couple of video companies, while in her spare time, singing background vocals for friends who were making recordings.

“Around that time, I got an offer to be one of the two female singers in the Modern Lovers,” she said, of what was simply a right time-right place situation.

Harrington stayed with Richman’s band for three years, and is on the “Jonathan Sings!” album. After leaving, she kept on singing, as a member of Barry Marshall and the Rockin’ Robins, and later with Rick Berlin in the band The Awful Truth. But her day job was doing documentary work at WGBH, producing on shows including “NOVA” and “Frontline.” Harrington gained some major notice with her autobiographical documentary “The Blinking Madonna and Other Miracles” in 1996, around the same time that she moved to the Pacific Northwest after meeting and falling in love with volcanologist Andy Lockhart.

“I loved everything about Boston, but there are no volcanoes in the East,” she explained, laughing. “So I moved out there.” Life hasn’t changed that much for Harrington. Her day job is still making documentaries, and at night she sings and plays rhythm guitar in the punk band Spiricles. She’s also found time to do some baking.

“I have a copy of ‘Mother Maybelle’s Cookbook’,” she said. “When we were making ‘The Winding Stream,’ my editor and his then-girlfriend got married. It was a nice backyard wedding, and I used Mother Maybelle’s carrot cake recipe.”The Woods Hole Film Festival runs Saturday through Aug. 2. Admission to screenings, panels and parties is $12; special events $25; ticket packages and full festival passes are also available. woodsholefilmfestival.org.